


To Lie, To Make

by ParadifeLoft



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Akallabêth, Background Relationships, Beleg is sometimes a walking irony ball, Conspiracy, Cuiviénen, F/F, F/M, Feanor's banishment, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Havens of Sirion, Identity Issues, Leadership, Lost history, M/M, Multi, Nargothrond, Nargothrond after Curufin and Celegorm's banishment, Nienor and Turin in Brethil, Political Alliances, Post-Darkening Valinor, Self-Loathing, Siege of Angband, Sundering of the Elves, Thargelion, Unreliable Narrator, aman - Freeform, marital separation, power struggles, vaguely fluffy preslash (for once in my life), young adults in Valinor are so amusingly innocent and naive
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-17
Updated: 2013-11-13
Packaged: 2017-12-26 22:11:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 8,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/970860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ParadifeLoft/pseuds/ParadifeLoft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Empty spaces; untold moments in the gaps between the grand gestures and poetry of the First and Second Ages. A collection of short, prompt-based pieces, each focusing on a different (set of) character(s).</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Conciliabule

**Author's Note:**

> So I'm trying out a schedule where I write a short piece of fic each day, based on a random entry from a list of writing prompts circulating on my tumblr dash. Hopefully I can keep this up for all fifteen days of prompts I have selected!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> conciliabule (n.) - a secret meeting of people who are hatching a plot

Amarie arrived last, in a dun traveling cloak that shifted with the blue of Tirion's lamps against the silver-glazed sky. Beneath, her garments and hair were bright as ever, but the manner she showed held more in common with her cloak than her dress. With legs crossed at the knee, Elenwe sat in the chair beside Hyellinde's. She sat up a bit straighter, and her mouth curled down and in with worry.

The servant in the corner glanced to the wine on the table, and Hyellinde nodded at her to pour each of her guests a cup. Something in the manner of the silence about them seemed to hush any speech, full and blanketed by the sibilant rain on the cobblestones outside.

"You wished us to meet tonight," Elenwe finally said, question as much as statement, sound scattering like shards into the air. Unspoken was the rest of what each mind mirrored: it had been long enough since last they had taken an evening together; their moods - the moods of both cities - were somber and tense; and it was, after all, not an accident, but something of their design, a lattice of threads beneath the surface of recent events.

Amarie nodded, when she'd folded her cloak against a chair, once the servant had left with the muted thump of a door in place of a word. "The Queen has mentioned to me in private counsel a sense she has had, growing ever stronger, of a time when unrest will come here again from lands beyond the sea," she said.

Her voice was cautious; eyes averted from either of them; presumably feeling it was some breaking of trust to tell of these things. Always with her heart divided, Hyellinde though, with some bitterness. She would have to choose, same as all of us, soon, would she not?

But she continued, oblivious to Hyellinde's thoughts. "She mentioned a great host of both our kindreds, at war in the East." A pause. "Not her own, though. They were missing."

"Ingwe will not order us into battle," Hyellinde said flatly. Neither of them could deny it; as went one king, so went another. A relief, perhaps. Dissent from the ways of the Valar was as far as she went, and she'd made that clear from the start.

But Elenwe looked at her with eyes that had hardened in the moments between. "As though you hadn't yourself said that Ingwion grows closer to the moulding of their old traditions with each passing year. His lady bard has mentioned he may wish to pass the crown, so he might devote all his time to more spiritual pursuits than worldly ones - thinks he's a Maia rather than a Vanya, or acts as it."

"Elenwe."

They both turned to Amarie at the pointed sound, and Elenwe ducked her eyes before the pull of the other woman's brows and the set of her mouth.

"My apologies," she said, and Amarie seemed to accept it; Hyellinde kept herself still and removed, more tension in her body than she would like. (She would not have minded Elenwe's hands rubbing painful circles against her shoulders, in this mood; or perhaps cupping her breast; unlacing her bodice. Something precarious saturated the air, and she would almost relish another frustrated remark about her selfishness in abandoning her kinsmen, if only for how it might wring that haze dry.)

When Hyellinde caught Amarie's eye once more, the worry had at least been replaced partially by a mixed amusement. Well, but did she not promise to serve…

"I shall speak with Ingwe, and Elemmíre, then," Amarie said lightly. What a place she had put herself. Elenwe wishing for war (several centuries late, wasn't it?); Hyellinde herself dreading the idea. So much work that had gone into the rebuilding of a new Formenos, her city in the north in all but name and place - the Outer Lands did not hold any draw for her, and certainly not after being torn up in battle.

The rain splattered outside, and she drank deeply of her wine.


	2. Druxy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> druxy (adj.) - something which looks good on the outside, but is actually rotten inside

"Tell me a story," Elwing would always say, to her nurses and her cousins, and her aunts and uncles who were not really aunts and uncles, or at least not most of them. Because Sirion was too damp, and too grey, and too harried and still all at once, a mass of dwellings where everyone went about their day as though collectively holding their breath - and Elwing longed for forests and stone.

Not _rocks_ , like the cliffs above the sea, perpetually salt-sprayed and cohabiting with green fuzz; but something carven and solid, built to endure through ages. And when they told her stories of the elves, a history spanning back centuries that seemed like millennia (because the centuries themselves were both intimate and strange, and Elwing was near eighty in a span of eighteen years) - there was _some_ comfort, at least, in the pull of her soul through time to imagine herself in her grandmother's place, where the court had all the beauty she could pluck from memory and none of the uncertainty that had followed when she fled.

Because they called her _princess_ , here. When she walked amidst the streets, some dirt and some cobbled brick, to oversee building schedules, training routines, farmers' and traders' logs of the harvest and the catch and poets' and minstrels' compositions; they all smiled to her, these parents of her once-playmates while the children she'd ran in the dust with pattered past her completing their chores.

Princess.

Even the remnants of her distant cousin's kingdom called her such, though they'd had their own, also lost (not returning, unlike her). Golden-haired, like the Princess Idril (Queen Idril? Too many titles for something that could not be called a kingdom.) and so that was the image that Elwing conjured in her mind - though at times she liked to imagine this other lost princess would be more akin to herself than to these grand figures whose images the people of the Havens tried to dress her in.

But if the tailors of Sirion would gift her dresses of cobalt blue, and the silversmiths would slip jeweled threads through her hair to better catch the light of her father's Silmaril when she wore it against her breast - then she might at least know who it was they wished her to mimic, so that she might do a proper job of it in manner as well as looks.

Earendil was the one who brushed a line around her mouth, and at the corner of her eyes, and told her to stop wearing the damn thing, but for all his looks and all their history - he was a Man, after all. Funny, as she'd thought him one of her own people, when she considered him much at all (because he stayed with his parents, and the other Gondolindrim, and Elwing herself spoke with them less of all the people here), until she was twenty and grown as if her years numbered closer to a century and she found to her surprise that he hadn't vanished, frozen in time with the rest of them.

She kissed him and lay with him in the grass that night and it was entirely a whim, one she surely would have been chastised for if she'd told the truth or at least offered it to the sorts of people who probably should have known. But she didn't care. Too much dying to be done, too soon, and she was tired of stories. Stories were for children.

The twins, round-eyed and awake in their bed, crawled over to where Elwing leaned over the guard. Elros grabbed at the tail of her braid, mouthing at it; Elrond simply looked up at her.

Elwing put one finger down for him to grab with his own small hands, and sang to them with words from a language she did not know.


	3. Anagapesis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> anagapesis (n.) - the feeling when one no longer loves someone they once did

Orodreth had always given a tiny double-take when he saw him, and this now was the worst one since when they'd met again in Beleriand for the first time.

Celebrimbor ducked his head, and turned back around the courtier he'd just passed with a mumbled _excuse me_ \- he had no desire for this now; and he could always come to meet with the master of arms tomorrow. Would have to, now (he'd made an appointment for today - and there went another pang of guilt to add).

A few feet that he managed in the direction of the corridor out of the main hall, and it was futile anyway. The steps behind him were his cousin's, as must have been the hand against his shoulder. Celebrimbor almost completely repressed his impulse to jump, and when Orodreth spoke his name, low and with an alarmingly newfound gravity of office, he steeled himself for a moment before turning to face him.

"You have my congratulations, your majesty," Celebrimbor said, before Orodreth could open with anything else. And he gave the jeweled belt and sash about his waist a closer scrutiny than his cousin's face; lacking a politeness he should have maintained, but…

Orodreth's green brocade and gems had silver mixed in with his uncle's gold; the snakes of Finarfin's House with emerald eyes, and a forest shimmering in embroidery on the cloth beneath.

Perhaps Celebrimbor should have said _thanks_ , or _joy_ ; the greater measure of honesty might have helped to cancel his many sins, of which disloyalty was not the greatest. Unfortunate that he also counted a desire for others to think well of him among them.

The king did not seem inclined to halt their pace while he took Celebrimbor's company for whatever purpose he had planned, and so they continued down into the hall. "It is less a pleasure that you congratulate me on than I would like," replied Orodreth, as they walked. "But even so, I thought you deserved my thanks made known to you, at the very least."

His _cousin's_ thanks? He hardly knew what for - oh.

"My remaining here provided strength for your position," Celebrimbor elaborated dully. His gaze wandered along the friezes near the base of the corridor's walls, looking but not much taking anything in. At least those carvings showed some sort of fondness for what their artists had left behind in coming here. Not hollow relief. They could still feel some sort of love for a thing even if they had broken ties with it.

Orodreth sounded perhaps a bit dismayed that he had stated it so plainly, when he replied. "Well, yes," the words came, curled inward like the furrow of a brow. "But it means more than just that - we are cousins, after all; your loyalty in such a situation to our house is…"

Celebrimbor did not hear much after that. To claim him loyal - almost worthy of laughter, had he been able to muster it. No, he was just as faithless as his father. He used the faces of freed captives for justification, true; despairing and hopeless all at once; and his cousin at least seemed convinced enough. Not to say that was anything new, anything besides his falling into the very same pattern he'd just extricated himself from.

But nonetheless. Strangers' relief was no substitute, and he had carved himself a hole in his heart, wide enough to house more than all of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here I bet you guys would have all thought I'd write something for this prompt about Finduilas ;)


	4. Cagamosis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> cagamosis (n.) - an unhappy marriage

When gold light had overtaken silver at the close of the morning's Mingling, Findis set her embroidery aside , belted the waist of a long outer robe over her linen shirt and trousers, and left the certainty of her own small household to climb the hill up to her parents' palace below the Mindon.

Few people crowded the streets, and for that she was grateful; likely many were of her own same opinion and had no wish to leave their houses until tensions had calmed to merely a mild fever instead of a violent one. Fortunate that they did not have to.

Besides that, she did not otherwise notice visible signs of what had just occurred - perhaps she'd grown up on too many stories of the Outer Lands, and half-expected the tension befallen them to spill over into physicality by means of stones cracked, windows shattered, signs of scuffled marks along the pavestones from fights, as though Tirion had become a village raided. But either way, she encountered no trouble, not even any wayward glances in her direction by the time she reached the palace. One benefit she could attribute, she supposed, to her utterly, plainly, Noldorin colouring.

Her parents' dwelling, when she reached it, was another matter entirely.

The servant who let her into the house looked unquestionably distracted; fingers clasping and laced together tighter than Findis's needlework for brief seconds before she pulled them apart again to grasp at formality instead. "My lady is in her rooms," she said, with a bob of her head. "And please excuse the, ah, certain amount of chaos; we have been sorting and packing the king's possessions for when he will leave with the prince…"

If Findis's stride quickened to a pace difficult for the girl to follow, it was simply confirmation of why she did not have more than a few servants in her own house.

A haphazard few of the blinds had been parted in Indis's quarters; swathes of the room in bright stripes that attempted and failed to encroach upon shadowed corners where the Trees' light could not quite reach. Findis thought of when she was young, prone to fits of seriousness and occasional melancholy (as if she was no longer) and her mother would stride into her room, tall and gold and brown, and throw open her neglected curtains to fill the room with her presence several times over and again. Now, it seemed that her mother must have attempted as much in her own rooms but only managed a part of it.

"Mother?" Findis called, as the worries began to tie strings of knots within her stomach once more. Indis appeared a few moments later, movements weary. She had dressed in one of her Vanyarin gowns, and tied her hair back simply, so that it made a yellow fall down her back.

"Oh, love," she said, when she saw Findis, and strode forward to pull her into an embrace before Findis could move to do the same. (She would not deny it pleased her, but Findis was not the one who needed comforting, not now.) So Findis hugged her back, nestling her head into her mother's neck.

"Mamil, don't worry about me. I'm all right, I promise."

_Why is father moving away?_ , she wanted to ask, but the words came hesitantly to her if at all, and neglected to spill from her lips.

When they broke from the embrace this time, it was Findis who drew her mother back to the cushioned bench beside one of the opened windows, and began running her fingers through her hair, undoing how it had been tied before and retwisting it into long, looped and intermingled braids.

But when she looked back at Findis, at a spare moment between, and asked a question of _her,_ Findis found she had no answer either.

_Was it foolish of me to have believed them when they said here it could and should be forever_?


	5. Sphallolalia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> sphallolalia (n.) - flirtatious talk that leads nowhere

"So tell me about how you're going to be learning architectural theory soon," said Curufinwe, when the conversation came to a slight lull. Findaráto had mentioned it offhand, earlier in the day, but there hadn't been much of a proper opening for Curufinwe to inquire. But his cousin was now far less harried and tense, his grandfather having given him leave from the court for the next few coming days, and Curufinwe intended to take advantage of Findaráto's good mood.

Findaráto turned back to Curufinwe from where he had been looking out over the balcony toward the dimly starlit evening tide, bathed in silver and with the faint outline of a ship in the distance. He took a sip of the light, honeyed wine  that had been poured for the two of them, and tucked his loose-hanging golden hair behind his ear. "Is there much to tell?" he asked, with a hint of amusement. (Findaráto had begun to smile more freely over the course of the evening, through the dinner of a white fish glazed with a tangy sauce, and now afterward, in the cooling breeze from the sea air that drew a subtle gooseflesh from the bare skin of his collar exposed by the scooped neck of his tunic. Curufinwe was hardly averse to this development.)

He mirrored the action, from the lazy sprawl he'd fallen into; the wine slid across his tongue and he gazed at Findaráto for a few moments as he savoured the drink. "I _am_ curious. Sculpture, diplomacy, music, language… And now architectural design? Are you thinking of trying to rival my father? And do tell what style you shall be apprenticing with."

"Elements of all of them, I should think," Findaráto answered placidly. "Confining yourself to only one seems like it would limit innovation rather than promote it. And I've told you before what I think of the artisans who insist that Noldorin craftsmanship is artistically superior."

"Ah, of course," agreed Curufinwe with a slight drawl and smirk. "Absolute charlatans. They know _nothing_ of their craft if they would make such a mistake in its most basic theory."

That evoked a raised eyebrow from his cousin, but Findaráto was not in the sort of mood where any such jesting comment that Curufinwe made would be taken as insult, cause him to scowl and his manner to turn irritable. He only took another sip of wine and shifted in his chair, causing the folds and creases of his clothes to shift with him against his limbs and torso. "But to answer your other question - I think you confuse me with _yourself_ again, Curvo."

He reached for the bowl of cashew sweets on the table before them, and his hand brushed Curufinwe's as he withdrew his own hand. Curufinwe's eyes flecked up to his cousin's.

"You know, _I'm_ curious now what exactly it must be like, to live with _such_ an inflated opinion of yourself," Findaráto continued, when he'd settled back into his chair. His mouth and cheeks had a slight pinkness to them, to compliment his hint of a good-natured smirk.

Curufinwe gave an indignant sniff, and then after a moment of Findaráto not recanting, rolled his eyes.

Findaráto only laughed.


	6. Agelast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> agelast (n.) - a person who never laughs

Beleg's companion grew graver with every step to the north.

It did not contradict the sense of Beleg's own mood, or that of the landscape around them, bleak with the shadows of haunted woods and haunted mountains and ruined fortresses to the north. Still, that did not mean Beleg felt any ease or contentment in leaving such things as they were.

He was tempted, at times, to tell stories, pleasant ones to pass the hours otherwise knit with silence. Tales of the Man he sought - for with all the hope he had brought to these once-unprotected lands between the rivers, surely he could bring at least a mote of cheer to the man beside him?

But the one time he'd begun, his intentions had the opposite effect, and Gwindor became even more sullen, withdrawn. Something of a feat, considering.

Not that Beleg found it unreasonable, but…

In lieu, he attempted to make lighter conversation.

"Have you fought in this territory before?" Beleg asked, as they made camp for the night. Gwindor's manner had begun to suggest more familiarity - a sureness in his footing, an ease of movement through the rocky, sparsely-treed plains. Or he might have simply been gaining more of his head; it was hard to say which.

Gwindor only stared at him blankly for a few seconds longer than normal, and then shook his head, mutely. "Once or twice, perhaps. Never very long." He resumed eating the few rations he'd taken in silence, forming a bed from what grasses and leaves they could find. Even though he always took first watch, and rarely slept or slept well even when he was allowed.

Perhaps it was the memory of the Nirnaeth? Any instance of these northern lands reminding, even if he had not fought where exactly they now stood? Beleg was silent, after that thought. He knew the desire, if he did not fully understand the motive, for refusing to speak on some matters.

Though Gwindor seemed more as though he refused to speak on _any_ matter, from how he attempted no conversation with Beleg of his own accord, either. All he did was methodological as the desperate attempts at survival made by those near lost in shadow, back before they journeyed west. Beleg supposed it an apt comparison. But those people, at least, were alone when they behaved so, and came by some measure back to health once brought amongst others again.

"Do you have family, back in Nargothrond?" he asked eventually. He'd heard tales, of Orodreth's policies concerning once-prisoners, and those strangers to his lands - but surely the word of a captain and a foster-son of his cousin whose correspondence and advice he sought, the word of the chiefs of Bow and Helm to whom he'd sent aid, would count for much.

He'd thought it an innocent question. But when Gwindor turned at the sound of his voice, his face flashed rage, and then misery, before settling to impassivity, with an enchantment to guard his eyes that none could pass.

"My father and mother," Gwindor said, voice flat. "My elder brother, once. No longer." He was silent for a time, and when he spoke again his voice had changed, as though for this one thing he almost dared to hope. "My betrothed."

Beleg smiled at that - perhaps he might reassure him this way, if there was yet some light he could hold to in the distance. "What distances we travel for those we love," he mused. "And what joy we shall find when we reach them."


	7. Mamihlapinatapei

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> mamihlapinatapei (n.) - the look between two people in which each loves the other but is too afraid to make the first move

The last time her people had packed their belongings to travel, moving their herds further and further west until they had crossed the mountains, Haleth had certainly been old enough that she remembered it now. She had not, though, been quite old enough to carry a sense in her bones, of the seasonal migration, predictable and easy as the sun's rising, that the clans had only recently let sink into these lands here. Rich and thick with history, or future.

That, and thick with blood. There were too few people left, surviving the orc attack, for Haleth to feel entirely at ease - though more than she'd expected to see still breathing, if she had expected to still be seeing at all. Imminent likelihood of death; that was the downpour beating against her face and shoulders when her father and brother died, one after another with a freezing dampness that numbed her to any other concerns, but those most immediately before her face.

Leading a people was different, though, despite being so thrust into such a role. And even preparing to leave, with only a fraction of those remaining providing the small bits of knowledge not obvious to those who'd never done such before - the days still allowed Haleth a breath in her mind, a space not stuffed full with plans. Grief, now, saw its place to scatter in on the breath like a clouding fog.

Danyal opened the door to their home before Haleth had even approached close enough to let herself in. Beckoning silently with her presence. There was too much space; too many rooms, now with her father and brother gone - she would have brought people in, those whose own families had died or could use another person helping ease their load, but she was hardly the only one with the option or the inclination, and those she spoke to seemed also inclined to share that amongst themselves rather than let her take up any additional slack. But her brother's wife - now widow - remained, and Haleth's nephew.

"He's taken well to the preparations," Danyal murmured, pressing a bowl of stew into Haleth's hands, from the fire outside. Haleth nodded; a certain thankfulness, a certain worry. How much more space, how much more fog, would live within this place if her sister-wife did not remain to clear it away? Chase the fog so that in its place could stand whatever passed between their hands like threads, marking the lines of an inner place, different air, different senses in the air.

It's good," she replied. Haldan should not grow sullen, with adults' worries, she thought to herself; did not say aloud. "We should be ready to move soon. Within several days, I've heard estimates."

She turned the decision over in her mind, not for the first time. It was not the refusal of the elf-chieftain's bargain, but the choice to leave, now, rather than in several months, or several years... Some, she suspected, would be content not to move at all, were it not for how unprotected they were here, and even that a reluctant persuasion.

Haleth herself would be pleased to see somewhere new, after what had transpired on this land. But would a place not so tied to this past in her nephew's memory serve to sever, rather than heal?

She looked up from her supper to find Danyal watching her, even gaze and like as not a guess as to what Haleth thought of now. They had spoken on the topic before, when the sun drew dusky blue down from the sky as it sunk beneath the plains. "We shall provide connection enough," Danyal said, voice low and steady. "A people can be as much a place as a land, Haleth."

Haleth held her gaze for several stretched moments, a solemn smile, between them; family, grieving, love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to [Kate](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Zimra) for the original idea of shipping Haleth and her brother's widow; and not to mention 5/6ths of the name I'm using for said character :) I hope she pleases!


	8. Brontide

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> brontide (n.) - the low rumbling of distant thunder

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _"But the fleets of Ar-Pharazôn came up out of the deeps of the sea and encompassed Avallónë and all the isle of Eressëa, and the Eldar mourned, for the light of the setting sun was cut off by the cloud of the Númenóreans. And at last Ar-Pharazôn came even to Aman, the Blessed Realm, and the coasts of Valinor; and still all was silent, and doom hung by a thread. ...But pride was now his master, and at last he left his ship and strode upon the shore, claiming the land for his own, if none should do battle for it. And a host of the Númenóreans encamped in might about Túna, whence all the Eldar had fled."_  
>  \- the Akallabêth

"His Majesty, father of the High King of the Eldar, has come with urgent news from Valimar," the palace steward said, when he had straightened from his bow.

Arafinwe rose swiftly from his desk, setting aside reports and proposals and letters. Ingwe was scarce seen any more amidst the streets of Valimar itself, much less so far out as Tirion. Arafinwe could scarce imagine what news would be both sufficiently urgent, not to mention of such a _nature_ that would require him come himself.

"Arien shines, nephew," murmured Ingwe in greeting, voice chiming bell-like, when he had entered and Arafinwe’s steward retired. He inclined his head; Arafinwe returned the gesture, dipping slightly lower. The unnatural serenity that radiated from Ingwe like the light rippled, with some deep disturbance shuddering beneath it. Arafinwe was still.

"My hopes that your journey was pleasant, my lord," said Arafinwe, quietly. "And we are at your disposal."

Ingwe’s face grew graver, and he returned polite words of thanks; Arafinwe would not deny himself slightly unsettled. “Lord Manwe has of late shared a knowledge with me of certain events that will pass in coming days, that I may convey his wishes and intentions to your our people,” he said.

"He cannot tell us of these things himself?"

"He has retreated, into counsel with Námo, and prayer to the Allfather, that he might be delivered guidance for what he must soon endure," Ingwe explained, with a slow shake of his head.

The air settled, slow and viscous, about Arafinwe’s shoulders and chest until it felt leaden. He brushed his fingers against the papers on his desk, staring at the edge of Ingwe’s robe. “Very well,” he replied, after a silence. “What did His Highness wish you convey to us?”

_The Noldor must evacuate Tirion._

 

\--

 

"First we have to leave so that we may go fight for them; and now they claim we must leave so _they_ can fight for _us_?”

Hyellinde’s voice, forceful and sharp down to the arcing point of it, echoed off the marble palace walls.

If Arafinwe sighed, deflating with the breath that left him so that his skin clung closer to his sorrows, she had built scaffolding enough around her heart that it did not move her sympathies. “They have no ulterior motives for you to question, Ahtarme. They wish us removed for the city so that we will come to no harm. It is an order they gave for our protection; and that is my will and responsibility too, that our people be protected. Besides, is that not what you have always claimed they should have done? Act to protect us - and yet here once again come would-be invaders of our home, of which we have foreknowledge, and you would fight the way in which the Valar would keep us safe this time?”

_I was forced to stay here, and I have taken Tirion as recompense, and I will not be_ driven _from her now!_ , Hyellinde wished to say. But such was only the first impulse of her soul, growling and knashing when poked along the tender beginnings of scars. Instead she drew herself higher still; gave the answer of her mind. “If they would protect us so, why did they send us into battle? Why did we shed blood in the Outer Lands, but they decide we must not here?”

_Why, if they truly would offer their protection, did they turn their backs on those whose anger blotted out their faith when failed once?_. She had spent too much time with Elenwe, Hyellinde reflected ruefully.

A look of anguish, attempting to be stuffed away, appeared on Arafinwe’s face. “The methods that would have prevented our fighting there would have cost more for those living where we fought, and they could not be evacuated so cleanly as can we,” he said. “They have more options here, more ideal, when they can use them. As now. Hyellinde, please. Ingwe did not say what the Valar plan; perhaps he does not know himself. But we cannot risk the safety of those people who would follow your example were you to stay.”

For all his words, he did not answer her questions. She had not, truly, expected him to - she had answered them herself, where her own thoughts fell. The Valar would not allow the shedding of Eldarin blood in the Undying Lands, precisely because they were such lands.

"Only because it may be a matter of the fates of others," Hyellinde answered him, defiant acquiescence, sharp with the promise of remembrance.

 

\--

 

"Oh stars," Hyellinde whispered, and there was horror writ on her face that Finrod had never before seen so uncomposed. "They’re killing them all."

Finrod’s stomach twisted.

He could still see to Túna, and the collapsing Calacirya, from the vantage point where he had watched her break away from the main host and stop. And stopped with her. Evacuate from Tirion, had been the orders; and they _were_ no longer in Tirion.

(in a prison of stone, walls and darkness all surrounding, lack of awareness of but anything else from disorientation, suddenness)

He had visited the Land of the Gift, once. (Just once, and then he had been busied with tasks among the people here, too much so for travel; and then later, the ships stopped sailing.) He did not wish to remember it like this.

Though he doubted any good would come of remembering otherwise.

"They are the rulers of Arda, and their law is just," came Finrod's hollow voice.


	9. Ayurnamat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ayurnamat (n.) - the philosophy that there is no point in worrying about events that cannot be changed

Caranthir had as a rule preferred silent, solitary crafts, or the furious, vicious rush of sparring practices, to hunting in the forests when they were younger; but when Amrod came to visit, he agreed to take a leave from his fortress for a time nonetheless.

Not immediately; he'd not expected such a request, and so his plans for the next few weeks, now to be revised, had assumed his presence within the walls. Amrod could wait.

Nestled in the foothills of mountains like the rest of his brothers', the castle at Helevorn sprawled wide  and far down to the shores of the lake. The waters were cold, lapping against Amrod's bared feet; pale ice blue where the peeking sun glinted, and darker grey on the northern shores. He could see the first hints of darkened clouds, ever-present over the northlands, that were not ordinarily visible from his own lands. Amrod wondered what it would be like, having that spectre always in the distance, on the edge of the horizon, instead of simply the green and blue meetings of trees and plains and sky.

Footsteps behind him. Caranthir's boots were heavy as the walls of white-grey stone, jutting cold and stern amidst the cliffs; and Amrod was more attuned to such things than many. (He'd hunted with the Laiquendi, a few times before, and heard their voices and footsteps even when they swore he should not be able to. The other skills they'd had to teach, he'd bumbled at compared to their practised movements, as it should be; but he could always feel their presence when they were near him.)

"Enjoying yourself?" Caranthir asked, when the foosteps halted and Amrod could feel his elder brother solid and definite at his back. Amrod turned to look back at him and gave a slight kick of his foot in the shallows.

"There's a lot of… indoors."

"Not right here there isn't." Caranthir gazed down with his impassible, searching look. At one point his eyes flicked over to the dampened, pebble-strewn mud beside where Amrod sat, but they just as quickly jumped back. "I'm going to the market in the city down along the dwarf-road shortly. I wanted to look over the state of things; wondered if you might be interested in coming along."

Amrod still sat, glance tracing the shoreline and the pines on the northern shore near the hills, and then he curled his feet up from the water, knees against his chest, and stood.

"Sure."

The horse Caranthir chose was not his usual travelling-horse, lordly as the rich robes of his own hands' work that he wore holding court or in councils, and his clothes, though fine, bore less of the usual Noldor ostentation of the cities and palaces from their youths. It set Amrod at ease, actually; moreso than his brother's court had.

And they rode south, just the pair of them; the road dusty and the dark, blue-grey mountain peaks a guiding wall, steady, focused, borders of one's vision leading onto the town's peaks in the distance.

The town was chatter; more footfalls; stalls with goods for sale and Thargelion's famers trading food for tools and textiles and amusements. Caranthir spoke with numerous people; they bowed and called him 'lord' and his speech lifted closer to the manner of Maedhros's or Curufin's, but the hum of activity, small circles of lives blowing around and between each other like falling leaves, brushed at his senses more clearly than any single detail within that larger stream.

Amrod washed himself in it.

 


	10. Wanweird

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> wanweird (n.) - an unhappy fate

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Weeelllll, that took a while. I can blame some of it on taking vacations to hang out with people these past two weekends, but I will admit that the rest was just flailing around being completely unproductive and getting no writing done. Bad author. Ah well, hopefully I shall get the rest of these done in a proper timeframe! Apologies to those of you I may have kept waiting.

Tyelkormo sprawled down on the large, plush rug, and closed his eyes. Maglor's eyes flicked across him as he gave his room a quick survey, sliding his hand along the familiar line of his traveling cloak, before entering the chamber fully and settling on a pile of cushions. He was quiet, measured, where his brother filled space in quick strides and broad movements that carried his echoes even in the gaps between his body itself. So he was now, upon the floor.

"Do you find that comfortable?" Maglor murmured, while Tyelko rolled slightly to the side, rubbing his face against the rug's softness. Celegorm returned to his position on his back with his limbs spread across the floor and eyes turned starward. Maglor was thankful that his brother's hair had remained clean - he did not relish the thought of any sort of blood smeared against his belongings.

"You hope it'll end, right?" Celegorm asked him, after a silence that was somehow an answer in itself, Maglor had learned that, though never quite what it was supposed to convey. The new question was directed at the ceiling, but Maglor could only assume himself the intended target.

He leaned forward. "Do you mean the war with Morgoth? I'm not sure _hope_ … that, that implies _faith_ , rather than knowing…" Maglor's brow furrowed in thought. He could not quite see how _else_ things would go. Eventually. At some point, even long in the future, they would defeat the Dark Lord. It did not seem a matter of _hope_.

But Celegorm shook his head, ruffling the halo of wavy hair fanned out across the floor as he did so, and for reasons that did not, apparently, have anything to do with the way Maglor's thoughts had gone.

"Not the _war_ ," he replied, with a certain insistent emphasis, as he sometimes did. "The siege."

_How different were they?_ , Maglor wondered. He watched the slow growth of the flames, newly lit as they'd rode back into the castle and stripped themselves of their armor, and now fluttering higher amidst the stones. _What would the war be otherwise?_ He had not read much of fighting at the libraries in Tirion - and few people were quick to recommend such accounts, even the loremasters. Maitimo had read of those things, but strategy, and forms, Maglor had not asked of; merely tactics, which were of use to him.

"I do," he finally said, with a slight, annoyed twist of his lip because while if he must simplify, he could equate the war and the siege well enough without trying to disentangle whatever distinction Tyelkormo drew, but he still did not like the word _hope_. Curufinwe had chastised him more than once, though, not to get himself lost rambling about theoretical concerns when Tyelko's face twisted in such a way as it was doing now, and so Maglor refrained.

Celegorm only ran his hands through the rug again, tilting his head, before rising to a sitting position and glancing toward the door as he did so. "That's good," he said, some of the usual quality his voice had missing now. "It's _awful_ up here; I don't know how you and Nelyo _stand_ it."

Maglor watched his brother blankly for a few seconds before he gave a small shrug. "Necessity, I suppose. You do as you have to." He was not sure what all he was supposed to be _standing_ , or what he could be doing _to_ do so, in truth. But his brothers rarely liked when he gave those sorts of answers.

His actual answer elicited a face from Celegorm anyway. "Better you than me then." But he was not any more contented or reminiscent of his usual demeanor, or demeanors, depending on how one wished to consider such things. "After the siege ends, too. I never feel like that'll be a good time, even though it should be. But if you don't mind, then fine, you can have it."

Maglor did not know what to say to that.


	11. Strikhedonia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> strikhedonia (n.) - the pleasure of being able to say, "to hell with it"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I'm kind of departing from my usual fare here. Some new Cuiviénen OCs rather popped up in my head and demanded to be written, and since the scene they wanted fit the current prompt I had, I just went with it.
> 
> For those of you who don't live inside my head and know everything that goes on in it, which I presume is all of you - my two OCs here are the eldest daughters of Tata and Tatie, and Imin and Iminye, leaders of the elven clans at Cuiviénen whose Amanyar representatives are the Noldor and the Vanyar, respectfully. The basic background here from my headcanon (which, I should note, contains influences from a whole lot of different sources and fandom discussions, and is not in any shape a pure creation of simply my own thought) is that when Ingwe, Finwe, and Elwe returned from their trip to Valinor, this sparked off a number of power struggles within the different elven clans. In one of these among the Minyar (Vanyar), the result was Iminye's death in ritual combat, and the subsequent turn of her people to Ingwe's leadership. (Imin was already dead, in an incident unrelated to these sorts of shenanigans, years before.) And hopefully that is all that's required to make sense of things! Thank you for reading.

Kyelpatiel had been thinking of names, when Minyel came to visit. Not of new ones - of old ones, and of new circumstances that made those old ones true again. When Antatiel left, with the massing host ready to walk into the west, there would be once again none but the one of them, as there had not been for over a century. If she wished (she did not), she could be simply _Tatiel_ again - as she had not been since she and Minyel played together as children.

Kyelpatiel's eldest brother wished to stay, not for ambition, and the reading of the people's murmurings that lead to it, but truly for love - of their parents, of their siblings, and of the land here they had grown in, safer the dangers they knew than some unknown paradise that left fell lights in the eyes of those who'd worried them from the start.

But such reasons were nowhere in the look she saw on Minyel's face.

"Our mother is dead," Minyel pronounced, the first words she gave to Kyelpatiel once she was in the door. She'd drawn herself up powerfully, almost complete if only she'd held her spear in hand, but it was a defensive display, not a threatening one - the pacing saw to that.

A few moments passed with Kyelpatiel silent, waiting for the fullness of her friend's words to come out - trying to rush would only disrupt the balance of them, and in this state surely prod Minyel into a reflexive temper. Nobody was happy, these days; these strange newcomers were not _welcome_ among them, with their arrogance, and provoked more anxiety and sharp words among the Quendi than any _joyous peace_ they said they wished to gift them with. (Gift them, but only by doing as they said, of course. Kyelpatiel had never pretended not to be a cynic.)

And even the ones who _were_ joyous, at the first news of a paradise across the sea all for them - they had their own tears as well, in pleading arguments with loved ones of theirs less inclined to trust. (Not as if her own family had been immune, no.)

Minyel's news was of a different sort, though, and one of far more foreboding. She halted, after a few more paces, back to the wall, and fixed Kyelpatiel with a fire-edged stare.

"In honour of the time we have spent as children, I request an assurance of the protection of the family of Tata," she said. A pause, where she looked away, biting at the inside of her mouth. "My people will not follow our family any longer. They will not follow _me_ ; they shall all be following Ingwe and that spirit inside the form who claims to rule over us. They have pledged my brother into the service of one of his friends, and my sister has agreed to marriage. He's given her the name _Calminye_ , now, as though this _light_ is some great honour to bestow upon a person."

She would not be looking for Kyelpatiel to make sympathetic noises at her family's plight. Or hers, rather, just hers, if her siblings went willingly as she seemed to say. In either case.

"You have that assurance," she answered her instead, solemnly. "Stay with us. If any of your people care so much as to interfere in our matters, we will answer them."

"Good," Minyel said. It was a savage snarl, reminding her (as if she'd forgotten), how her friend was truly her parents' child. Their eldest. "I shall make it known then, tomorrow, that those who once followed my parents have the option still of loyalty instead of running off into the distance for the favor of another."

"I wish you well in it." A pause. The Minyar were not often given to displays of rhetoric - at least not any that were _subtle_. "And a new name for yourself then, might not go amiss."

A broad smile appeared on Minyel's face, wild with a determination borne of fury. "As if I had not thought as much as well," she said, though without any ill-will toward Kyelpatiel herself. " _Minyel Avarie_. There is no weakness in our family still, despite what might be said. I do not cower here, in fear of the unknown. I refuse the mastery of any but myself."

And it fit her, truly. Kyelpatiel answered her with a smile as well, pleased by the choice, and the boldness of its message. Calminye and Avarie. Her hopes, in truth, were not great that those two new people would be equally matched, not in this upheaval - but better that Minyel fight. She would not be satisfied, otherwise. None of them would be.


	12. Petrichor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> petrichor (n.) - the smell of dry rain on the ground

Her name, and her kin, and her story, the man asked for. They should not have been difficult things.

And so she looked back, into the time stretched before, this place where the answers should be kept.

Was met with: silence. A void.

At the end, terror blossoming like the stain of a fat, overripe berry, bursting against the ground.

Alone, among what should have been - something, _something_ ; she stared wide-eyed and concentrated as if she might form a world in the midst of nothing - the terror engulfed her once more. Her heart pulled bowstring-taut; her eyes clouded and stung.

Choking sobs heaved from her from whence words should have come; words locked away and blanketed with darkness, not soft like those about her own form, and she could not reach - but the story, the story she could feel outpouring from her soul in a form too jumbled; in a music of crashing thunder and screeching disharmonies - she was not the instrument to make them notes audible to the ear, though, her own or another's.

The man took her fingers in his own, covered her palms in his larger ones. Comfort, perhaps, but a thread strung between them, and pulled the horrid black noise of a tale from her mouth with such force she thought she would choke upon it.

She cried, and cried.

 

\----

 

The shelter was dim, by the time her tears ran dry; only a small fall of blue-grey light against the floor right below the single window to brighten it. The darkness held her, swaddled like the blankets she'd been wrapped in to dry her from the rain - held her tears in around her, stifling as the swollen stormclouds, unable to dissipate and be _gone_. And she did not wish that heaviness remaining around her person.

The first step wobbled, dizzy, unsteady. _Should your head be held this high?_ , it said. When the door swung open, she blinked.

Cold air; tiny gusts brushing across her skin, twirling the idle strand of yellow hair dried stiff and plastered to her shoulder. The moon had outstretched itself, where perched just above the trees, pressing beyond its own boundaries into a pale, dampened ring.

She filled herself with air, and the smell of earth.

The men who had brought her here, only a few remained, visible - cutting at the trees, sitting against a log in low conversation. She would not stray too far - some thought, that she followed with intuition rather than knowing - stay close to him. And they had warmed her, with the blankets that she still clutched now round her shoulders and neck.

Steps squished beneath her toes, as she walked the border of the small clearing. A hill, she could see rising some distance away; and she tried to think of the name, the word, what meaning it held - surely some - but they shattered, scattered tiny pieces on the storm winds, no matter how delicately she held each piece while pulling it from the depths of memory. Perhaps she only imagined holding them at all.

A small fire grew at the edge of the camp, as she wandered, drawing in the men to it out from their hiding spots in the woods; small moths emerging to flit about. And her cold ears, the spot of her head where her hair remained damp, transformed her as well; she crept silent to stare and feel the warmth flicker in a dance with the wind against her face and the tips of her fingers.

Not more than a flicker, a brief wrinkle amidst a smooth stretch of time, passed, before the man whose hands she knew better than his face, turned and brushed her fingertips as well, warmer than the fire. "Come, eat," he said; and this she understood even though the words each alone would not have passed her lips.

The bowl he gave, full and hot, spun steam around her face, dampness and heat all in one. The earth in the air slid away; her nose filled with the flavour of the stew, rich meat and the savoury fat of the broth. Firelight shone bright on the man's face, and in his eyes, still upon her own form.

She ate, and soon the bottom of the bowl gleamed with the thinnest sheen of the last few drops.

Clouds hung white and grey in the moonlight, a blanket of wispy threads in darker blue.


End file.
